A Russian hacker allegedly took down the Royal Family’s official website in a targeted attack, leaving the site offline for 90 minutes.
The hacker, known as KillMilk, is the purported leader of the Russian hacktivist group known as KillNet.
In a Telegram post, the hacker group took credit for the virtual attack against the Royal Family’s official website.
The group claimed the site attack was an “attack on pedophiles.”
They also posted a photo of King Charles with the caption, they killed our website.”
The Royal Family’s official website, royal.uk remained offline for around 90 minutes but later became active again, the Daily Mail reported.
A royal family source said hackers had “not gained access to the Royal Family’s website.”
“The website went down due to a Denial of Service attack for around an hour and a half,” they said.
“There was no access to our systems or content,” they added.
This is not the first time KillNet has targeted the Royal Family.
Last year, the group took down the royal website for several hours in a targeted DDoS attack.
This is how BlackBerry described the hacker group:
“KillNet is a Russia-aligned hacktivist group that gained notoriety during the first month of the Russian-Ukraine conflict when they began a widespread—although relatively unsophisticated—campaign of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, political rhetoric, and misinformation.
KillNet’s self-proclaimed anti-war axiom states that their primary targets are supporters of Ukraine, including NATO countries and their allies.
Although KillNet’s ties to official Russian government organizations such as the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) or the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) are unconfirmed, the group is considered a threat to critical infrastructure by a multi-national joint cybersecurity advisory.”
Last year, the Five Eyes intelligence network warned that KillNet was just one of many hacker groups pledging support for Russia amid the Ukraine war.
Two other hacker groups, UserSec, and Anonymous Russia, created outages at Birmingham Airport and London City Airport in July this year.
UserSec said on its Telegram page:
“We decided to put one of the largest airports in the UK to sleep. Glory to Russia!”
The group also shared a post by Anonymous Russia, which said:
“Anonymous Russia joins the attack on UK airports! Before your eyes, the sleeping international British airport Birmingham! Glory to Russia!”
Earlier this year in the US, hackers exploited a flaw in widely-used software that has hit several US federal government agencies.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed the agencies suffered the attack.
The report came after Hacktivist groups KillNet, Anonymous Sudan, and REvil, declared a cyber war on the West.
The groups threatened to unleash a massive cyber onslaught on the European banking system within “48 hours” (the information was relevant as of yesterday), according to Russian online newspaper Lenta.ru
The incident occurred just months after the Biden administration rolled out a new National Cybersecurity Strategy to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from “borderless” cyber threats.
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